Olivia de Havilland, a two-time Oscar winner and the last surviving star of "Gone With the Wind", died on Sunday at the age of 104.
The actress' publicist Lisa Goldberg told CNN that de Havilland passed away from natural causes at her residence in Paris, where she lived for over six decades.
De Havilland emerged as a star during the classic movie era and had become one of the screen's top actresses by the late 1940s.
She was born on July 1, 1916, in Tokyo, to British parents. She is the older sister of famous actress, Joan Fontaine.
The sisters were often ill as children, and their mother decided to return to England for treatment. A stopover in San Francisco led the trio to settle in Saratoga, California, eventually, their parents porced, and their mother remarried.
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Olivia de Havilland[/caption]
De Havilland starred in a school production of "Alice in Wonderland.", and got her first professional break as an understudy for Gloria Stuart (later the elderly Rose in "Titanic") in Max Reinhardt's production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream."
She won the role of Hermia, after Stuart bowed out, and made her stage debut in Shakespeare. The Hollywood Bowl appearance led to a contract with Warner Bros. and the 1935 film version of the play.
De Havilland got her breakthrough at age 19, as a romantic partner for Errol Flynn in the 1935 movie "Captain Blood", which was the first of eight film collaboration with Flynn.
Melanie Hamilton Wilkes in "Gone With the Wind" (1939), which was considered the top moneymaking film of all time when adjusted for inflation.
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However, De Havilland's lawsuit against her employer, Warner Bros., may have been her most notable achievement in Hollywood.
The actress sued the studio in 1943 after it attempted to extend her seven-year contract, which was expiring, as the studio system mandates actors with suspension without pay if they turned down roles, and the suspension time was added to their contracts. De Havilland's eventual court victory helped shift the power from the big studios of that era to the mega-celebrities and powerful talent agencies of today.
De Havilland, she gained the freedom to pursue better roles in award-winning films such as "To Each His Own" (1946), "The Snake Pit" (1948), and "The Heiress" (1949).
She earned her first Oscar win for "To Each His Own", which also highlighted the often strained relationship with her famous younger sister, Joan Fontaine.
Fontaine, also an Oscar winner, passed away in 2013 at age 96. De Havilland rarely made any public remarks about her sibling.
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Joan Fontaine and Olivia de Havilland[/caption]
In 1949, De Havilland reached the peak of her career in William Wyler's "The Heiress" as Catherine Sloper, a plain, awkward girl courted by a fortune hunter for her inheritance. She becomes an embittered woman who turns the tables on a cold, unloving father (Ralph Richardson) and her suitor (Montgomery Clift).
It was adapted from a play based on Henry James' "Washington Square", which won de Havilland her second Oscar for best actress.
The actress screen career inevitably began to cool in the 1950s and '60s, although she still had memorable roles in "My Cousin Rachel" (1952) and "Light in the Piazza" (1962).
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